Saturday, January 17, 2015
Friday, January 16, 2015
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Alice Costner Bell
The aunt of Andrew Jackson in the previous picture.
This is my great aunt. If I crop it a little more it could pass for a picture of me.
Costner genes.
The Ungraciousness of the Boston HERALD. Climbers of El Capitan took "Longer than Expected"
This was the first headline after the climbers reached the top.
THEY TOOK "LONGER THAN EXPECTED."
You wonder what goes on in journalists' minds.
And then you begin envisioning the headline writer. Pudgy oaf of 45? Gum-chewing 20 year old lass in very high heels?
THEY TOOK "LONGER THAN EXPECTED."
You wonder what goes on in journalists' minds.
And then you begin envisioning the headline writer. Pudgy oaf of 45? Gum-chewing 20 year old lass in very high heels?
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Carl Rollyson on Mailer's Letters & NM's memorable phrases, one to Carl and one to me
Start of Carl Rollyson's review of J. Michael Lennon's edition of SELECTED LETTERS OF NORMAN MAILER in the UNIVERSITY BOOKMAN:
By any measure, Norman Mailer (1923–2007) is one of the most important writers of post-World War II America. Over seven decades, he produced powerful and provocative work, beginning with his debut war novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948), a work inspired by U.S.A. (1937), the John Dos Passos trilogy that aimed to encompass both American history and the American character. Like Dos Passos, Mailer created an array of characters and a dramatic storyline that celebrate the diversity and expansiveness of his native land, while deploring its darker strains of racism and jingoism. With Advertisements for Myself (1959), he created an exuberant but also self-reflexive (if not always self-reflective) form of writing that presaged the confessional writing of the 1960s and introduced a new persona for the writer, who aimed to make himself the center of consciousness for his times. This intersection of the personal and political reached its apogee in The Armies of the Night (1968), Mailer’s alternately ribald and profound account of protest culture in the Vietnam era. And when that form of self-reflexive journalism became jejune, he scoured his own style and produced a stunning documentary nonfiction novel, The Executioner’s Song (1979), ostensibly an account of Gary Gilmore’s murderous criminality, but in fact nothing less than an encyclopedic immersion in the values of American culture. It is a masterwork that rivals his first great achievement. Finally, in Oswald’s Tale (1995) and The Castle in the Forest (2007), Mailer continued, with undiminished vigor, to explore the roots of evil and its impact on the American psyche.
Later on, Rollyson tells of a personal contact:
He wrote a letter to me that is not in this collection, and I still remember a vivid phrase he bestowed on me when he referred to all the books his friends had written and sent to him for his endorsement. These books were part of his “guilt impost pile,” he told me. Like his friends, I wanted him to endorse a book of mine. He never did, and I don’t know that he read my book. But that he responded at all and with such style impressed me. Consider that word “impost.” He was telling me he acknowledged a sense of obligation to me and to all his readers, friends or not. This is the mark of a gentleman, a title Mailer would not have abjured. He grew up reading about gentleman heroes and wanted to create his own, as well as to exemplify the creed of the gentleman.
I wrote a big article on Mailer, the last article I ever wrote on a typewriter. I remember the long day I typed a last clean text of it. I remember a savage, suck-up-to-Mailer article by a Baltimore journalist who like Romeo in AN AMERICAN DREAM had more pressure in his eyes than ideas. On a clipping of the article, Mailer wrote: "To Hershel--may his ideas prevail to the sticking point. Norman."
The title of Carl Rollyson's review is "A Gentleman of Letters."
By any measure, Norman Mailer (1923–2007) is one of the most important writers of post-World War II America. Over seven decades, he produced powerful and provocative work, beginning with his debut war novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948), a work inspired by U.S.A. (1937), the John Dos Passos trilogy that aimed to encompass both American history and the American character. Like Dos Passos, Mailer created an array of characters and a dramatic storyline that celebrate the diversity and expansiveness of his native land, while deploring its darker strains of racism and jingoism. With Advertisements for Myself (1959), he created an exuberant but also self-reflexive (if not always self-reflective) form of writing that presaged the confessional writing of the 1960s and introduced a new persona for the writer, who aimed to make himself the center of consciousness for his times. This intersection of the personal and political reached its apogee in The Armies of the Night (1968), Mailer’s alternately ribald and profound account of protest culture in the Vietnam era. And when that form of self-reflexive journalism became jejune, he scoured his own style and produced a stunning documentary nonfiction novel, The Executioner’s Song (1979), ostensibly an account of Gary Gilmore’s murderous criminality, but in fact nothing less than an encyclopedic immersion in the values of American culture. It is a masterwork that rivals his first great achievement. Finally, in Oswald’s Tale (1995) and The Castle in the Forest (2007), Mailer continued, with undiminished vigor, to explore the roots of evil and its impact on the American psyche.
Later on, Rollyson tells of a personal contact:
He wrote a letter to me that is not in this collection, and I still remember a vivid phrase he bestowed on me when he referred to all the books his friends had written and sent to him for his endorsement. These books were part of his “guilt impost pile,” he told me. Like his friends, I wanted him to endorse a book of mine. He never did, and I don’t know that he read my book. But that he responded at all and with such style impressed me. Consider that word “impost.” He was telling me he acknowledged a sense of obligation to me and to all his readers, friends or not. This is the mark of a gentleman, a title Mailer would not have abjured. He grew up reading about gentleman heroes and wanted to create his own, as well as to exemplify the creed of the gentleman.
I wrote a big article on Mailer, the last article I ever wrote on a typewriter. I remember the long day I typed a last clean text of it. I remember a savage, suck-up-to-Mailer article by a Baltimore journalist who like Romeo in AN AMERICAN DREAM had more pressure in his eyes than ideas. On a clipping of the article, Mailer wrote: "To Hershel--may his ideas prevail to the sticking point. Norman."
The title of Carl Rollyson's review is "A Gentleman of Letters."
Overtook a man on the beach who says he will be 80 in March, ahead of me
You would think with 159 years between us we would be able to change the world.
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